The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.
Industrial controller systems, such as standard industrial control systems (“ICS”) or programmable automation controllers (“PAC”), may include various types of control equipment used in industrial production, such as supervisory control and data acquisition (“SCADA”) systems, distributed control systems (“DCS”), programmable logic controllers (“PLC”), and industrial safety systems. Such systems may be used in industries including electrical, water and wastewater, oil and gas production and refining, chemical, food, pharmaceuticals, robotics, and the like. Using information collected from various types of sensors to measure process variables, automated and/or operator-driven supervisory commands from the industrial controller system can be transmitted to various devices, e.g., actuator devices such as control valves, hydraulic actuators, magnetic actuators, electrical switches, motors, solenoids, and the like. These actuator devices collect data from sensors and sensor systems, open and close valves and breakers, regulate valves and motors, monitor the industrial process for alarm conditions, and so forth.
In general, configuration of industrial controller systems can be time consuming, and unfriendly or impossible for non-technical users. For example, configuration of individual controller devices may require manual interaction with the individual devices, updating firmware (e.g., by inserting memory devices or wired computer interfaces at the individual controller devices) or adjusting settings. Further, in general, gathering data from individual controller devices can be time-consuming and laborious, rendering impossible any real-time or near real-time analyses of such data, including any analyses of data from multiple controller devices. These limitations can make it particularly difficult (or impossible for non-technical users) to deal with situations where a controller device begins to fail, or needs to be updated in view of changes, e.g., to a manufacturing line or process.